1 9 6 5 – 1 9 7 3 (UK)
BBC2’s Thirty-Minute Theatre was an attempt to reintroduce live drama to British television at a time when most programme-makers had put the method behind them.
However, the live element didn’t last long, being phased out in favour of the convenience of pre-recording.
Even so, a handful of the series’ plays remained live until 1968. One of the last was The News-Benders, directed by Rudolph Cartier starring Donald Pleasence and Nigel Davenport, with themes of extreme surveillance and television as tools to control the masses.
